Carolee Schneemann

Carolee Schneemann began her art career as a painter in the late 1950s.^[1] Her painting work began to adopt some of the characteristics of Neo-Dada art, as she used box structures coupled with expressionist brushwork.^[1] These constructs share the heavily textural characteristics found in the work of artists such as Robert Rauschenberg.^[1] Schneemann described the atmosphere in the art community at this time as misogynistic and that female artists of the time were not aware of their bodies.^[8] These works integrated influence by artists such as Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne and the issues in painting brought up by the abstract expressionists.^[9]Schneemann chose to focus on expressiveness in her art rather than accessibility or stylishness.^[1] She still described herself as a formalist however, unlike other feminist artists who wanted to distance themselves from male-oriented art history.^[10] Schneemann became involved with the art movement of happenings when she organized A Journey through a Disrupted Landscape, inviting people to "crawl, climb, negotiate rocks, climb, walk, go through mud".^[11] Soon thereafter she met Allan Kaprow, the primary figure of happenings in addition to artists Red Grooms and Jim Dine.^[11] Influenced by figures such as Simone de Beauvoir, Antonin Artaud, Wilhelm Reich, and Kaprow, Schneemann found herself drawn away from painting.^[12